Friday, August 11, 2017

Why Not You Mom? Talk About Bedside Manner

My mother died of breast cancer. It wasn't nice. She had a radical mastectomy, but the cancer had spread.

My brother was a doctor and she would talk to him. She needed somebody she trusted to talk to. My father had died some years earlier.

My mother was in pain and near the end it wasn't very nice. There were other things that contributed to her death, but the cancer was her final killer. Before she died she asked my brother, "why me?"

"Why me?" is a question a lot of people ask at critical times. I think it is short for "Why is this happening to me? I obeyed the law. I went to church. I was a good whatever. I did what I was supposed to."

"Why not you mom?", is what my brother responded. He was saying cancer isn't personal - it happens - some folks get it, some don't.

Disease isn't about being punished. Some people claim life is a disease because we all die in the end. I'm not sure my brother would have agreed with this.

My brother died years later. Parkinson's got him. My sister died after that. COPD and Congestive Heart Failure took her. I have another sister who is 12 years older than me. She seems fine. I had prostate cancer a few years back and had surgery - so far, so good.

Lotsa' death - life is fulla' death. It's gonna' catch ya'. My mother lived in a house full of smokers. My brother was a Radiologist. I don't know if that contributed to his Parkinson's. My sister smoked her entire life. I'm guessing that led to the COPD and CHF.

Our environments can kill us. There's a lot we can do about our environments. Some people get this - some don't. Some people believe in second hand smoke, exposure to radiation, global warming - some don't. Ignoring our environment is passive suicide.

We can kill ourselves. We can do it in a flash or we can do it over the course of decades. Smoking is active suicide.

Stress is a bigly killer and a lot of us live stressful lives. Work, religion, education, politics, relationships, expectations, anticipations - all that can be stressful.

Some of that is external and how we internalize it contributes to our stress levels. Our expectations and anticipations are internal processes that greatly affect our levels of stress. Our expectations and anticipations are affected by our intelligence and our spirituality (nothing to do with organized religion).

WTF? This is the Church of the Holy Moly. What has this got to do with Donald Trump? Why you wastin' our time. This is pissin' me off.

Hey, adjust your expectations! Stop anticipating! Chill! Think!

Donald Trump is the result of choices we made. The folks who voted for him were engaging in active suicide.

He didn't just appear out of nowhere. We allowed our political environment to get out of hand and this is what happened - passive suicide.

Get it MF? We either actively and/or passively did this to ourselves. So what you gonna' do about it? Yeah you!

The country has been hijacked. Greedy opportunists who were/are willing to commit treason sold us out and betrayed us. Follow the money - the money from Russia and China and see where it takes you. Follow the money that comes from good ole' American billionaires too.

In the meantime, we need to stop fighting among ourselves. There ain't a lot we can do about the brain eating zombies who support and defend this aberration. Those of us who haven't been infected can work together to deal with this or we can turn on each other.

Everybody out there ain't yo friend either, even if they say they are. Yeah, some people are whacked out trolls looking to fuck you up. Some are agent provocateur's.

Sorry, but we lost the brochure that tells you who the good guys are. You have to figure that one out for yourself. Here's a clue - start by assuming that anybody who does not advocate for removing Donald Trump is a brain eating zombie.

You don't have to take out the zombies. Ignore them and move on. What we need to do is use the most powerful weapons we have to rid ourselves of the opportunist traitors. Vote. Lobby your elected representatives. Get involved.

When you do vote, make sure you vote affectively. Don't get distracted by the bogus candidates who want to syphon your vote off. Don't waste your vote on bullshit alternative party candidates who are secretly working with the opportunist traitors.

In the end, you ain't gonna' like no fascism - no siree Bob. Dem fascists gonna' fuck you over every time.

I can tell you what ain't gonna' set you free: Libertarianism; The Tea Party; The Republican Party; Scientology; any religious fundamentalism; Ayn Rand; a host of others; and any of the isms.

If you haven't tried any of these, I suggest you do: 1984; Brave New World; and Friendly Fascism. Friendly Fascism is hard to find. It's worth the effort.